For many years, the United States has sought to promote regime change abroad in order to advance its security and economic interests. However, a growing scholarly consensus has found that these covert regime-change missions are often ineffective and produce deleterious side effects. They tend to spark civil wars, lead to lower levels of democracy, increase repression, and draw the foreign intervener into lengthy nation-building projects.
In part, this is because these missions are often based on exogenous factors that can change over time. In other words, the regime change policymakers invoke is often based on long-run historical trends that shape “structural factors” in the foreign country (economic, social, political, environmental, or international features that actors take for granted in the short run).
The other reason is that the United States’ track record of regime change is so poor is because of cognitive biases that cause policymakers to focus on the desirability of the goals of a campaign, rather than asking hard questions about the full resources required to make it succeed. This has led to an overreliance on forcible regime change as a tool of American foreign policy, making it harder for America to accomplish its more important long-term objectives and makes autocrats more likely to view the U.S. as an existential threat.
In other words, when regime change is used as a default tool for American foreign policy, it sets a dangerous precedent that undermines the effectiveness of more effective tools to advance freedom and improve human rights around the world. It also makes foreign countries more wary of American influence, which ultimately limits America’s ability to pursue its own national interests.